The Canadian Para-swimming team is preparing for the World Championships which begin on Sunday. Its 32 athletes are taking part until Wednesday at a training camp in Crawley, England, before flying to Madeira, Portugal, where the competition will be held.
Aurélie Rivard will be seen again. He has already won 4 gold, 6 silver and 4 bronze medals in his world career.
On the men’s side, Nicolas-Guy Turbide, Tokyo’s silver medalist in the S-13 category (for athletes with partial visual impairment), will once again try to get on the podium.
Also watch is Nicholas Bennet, from British Columbia, but training at the High Performance Center in Montreal. In Tokyo, where he is the youngest Canadian athlete in any sport at the age of 17, he made three finals and set four Canadian records in four events in the S-14 category. In the April trials in Victoria, he broke his four records in Tokyo. These will be his world premieres. He turned 18 in November.
We shouldn’t forget New Brunswicker Danielle Dorris of Moncton. In Tokyo, he received silver in the 100m backstroke after missing the podium by just five hundred in the 200m medley. Especially in the 50m butterfly he rose to fame in the Japanese capital when he twice broke the world record towards winning the S-7 gold. Hitting the wall in 32.99 seconds in the final, he became the first swimmer in his category to break the 33 -second mark in this event.
Dorris made his swimming debut at age 3. His father signed him up for lessons at the local swimming pool. In the summer of 2008, at age 5, his father moved to El Paso, Texas for his job. The idea of swimming in the Paralympic Games stays in Dorris ’mind.
In Texas, he played soccer and rode the track. Until his family returned to Canada in 2012, Dorris once again turned his attention to swimming. Then, at age 11, he started training under Ryan Allen at the Blue and Gold Swimming Club in Moncton.
Dorris earned a spot on the team for the Rio Paralympic Games in 2016, where he was the youngest Canadian Paralympic swimmer in history, age 13, in the S-8 category. His highlight in Brazil was helping Canada finish 5th in the 4 x 100m medley with a national record.
His journey to the top accelerated a few months before the Tokyo Games when he took a classification exam in Texas. The rest is history now.
While he may have surprised his opponents with these Games, the 19-year-old knows that won’t happen this time around. He expects to have good competition in Portugal. He will participate in the same three individual races as in Tokyo.
This person was a bit hard for training because I moved out of the house and it was a big changeDorris mentions. I hope this competition will confirm that I am part of the world’s elite.
After the Tokyo Games, with the agreement of his Moncton coach and his parents, he decided to leave New Brunswick to go and train in Montreal under the leadership of Mike Thompson at the High Performance Center – Quebec.
When I left home, this was the first time I had moved and lived alone. It was a big change in my lifesaid Dorris.
It’s a bit hard to be away from my family. Adaptation is really hard and it has a big impact on my swimminghe revealed.
But I think I’ve been able to be as good as I can be at home, so I’m really excited for the World Championships and see what happens.
A training camp like the one just recently in England allows you to get into the atmosphere of the World Championships.
When you’re training at home, it’s hard to be motivated for a big competition, Dorris says. A camp like this allows you to build team spirit and feel like you represent Canada. Other swimmers are friends for life and we encourage each other. Everyone wants us to succeed.
After the World Championships, most Canadian athletes will prepare for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England.
Danielle Dorris decided to take a break to be with her family for the rest of the summer in Moncton. I knew we were going to do some renovations. We also watch movies and play board games like before.he says.
I’m really happy to be back home.
When it’s time to get back to the pool, it’s in Moncton. Anyway, for him, the important thing is to be able to defend his gold medal at the Paralympic Games in Paris in the summer of 2024.
Source: Radio-Canada
